new years, bujinkan, zombieland

[deralte]

I had the first migraine of my life on the evening before new years. It started with an aura, which is sort of a visual hallucination which shimmered in a jagged circle in front of my eyes for quite awhile before expanding outwards and leaving me with a pounding headache. Only 30 or so percent of people get migraines with auras, so yay! I went to sleep soon afterwards since painkillers had no effect, and slept for 10 hours before getting up on New Year's eve (I had very light nausea for which I am very grateful). rinzei and havenward were coming over for our usual celebration so I took another nap in the afternoon (and had this awesome dream where I was joining Methos on an archaeological dig in the rainforests of South America... pity I woke up after we'd just met) in the hopes of feeling a little less dead. It amazed me how much the migraine took out of you. It's actually messed up my sleeping habits since then so I finally gave in and started setting an alarm, and that combined with bujinkan tonight will hopefully be enough to get me back on my usual circadian rhythm.

New years itself was spent drinking alcohol (less for me due to the migraine), catching up on each others lives, and watching things, as usual. We had a delicious dinner at Red Robin's then snacked copiously at home. They hadn't seen Wonderfalls before so we watched about eight eps of that, then we switched to Mendol which is a jdrama about three girls who want to become idols and get their dream, but only by becoming a boy band instead. It was a lot more... raunchy then I expected it to be, though just about as cracktastic. Not a show for everyone, as witnessed by the fact that havenward refused to watch it while even remotely sober;) We called it a fairly early night (you know, around 3am) which was good for me since I was still exhausted and slept until noon. We hung out and watched more Wonderfalls before calling it a day.

I've been catching up on my reading and watching over the holiday (unfortunately, not my writing. I haven't written a thing in weeks. Stupid apathy.). I finally got to see Zombieland which I watched last night with my dad. It wasn't as good as Shawn of the Dead, but it was a lot of fun, and strangely relaxing to watch. I noticed I spent all of my drive today picking out which car I'd want for a zombie apocalypse though... I actually sat down and read an entire book on Sunday. Our heating went out (again) so I huddled on the couch in front of our new fake fireplace space heater (it's adorable and almost as satisfying as a real fire) and read the book from cover to cover, stopping only for hot chocolate and cashews. It was Enchanted, Inc. which wasn't bad, though apparently the rest of the series goes down hill.

The hardest thing I've done on this holiday is go to bujinkan tonight. For some reason it always feels like you haven't trained in a month rather than the week we had off between christmas and new years, and therefore, it's hard to motivate yourself to go back to that first class after the new year, especially since January is devoted to reviewing the basics. Be that as it may, I went and was glad I did. Jack was bored or something cause he spent a lot of time watching and helping me and even made me teach. Part of the theme for the year is 'lower' ie, bending your knees a lot, so I know I'll be limping tomorrow, though it's not as bad for me as for some. I think an individual theme for myself is going to be 'waiting' ie, not moving in, but instead letting your opponent run into your fist or foot or whatever. This requires holding back and waiting to strike until that perfect moment (ie timing) and I tend to get anxious and jump the gun. We did front rolls with a little jump before them which was a lot more fun than the slow rolls from last year. Then we did punching, ending in a low position (the key is to twist your spine towards the leading leg just slightly before you move), then blocks (which eventually bruised my left knuckles. pads hurt.), then kicks. All started with the pads, then we did a practical application. I had a good partner, and Jack's criticisms balanced out his praise (I even surprised a 'good!' out of him with a side roll *L*) so it was a pretty good start to the new year and I appreciated getting my adrenaline flowing again.

Comments

[c0d3-w4rri0r.livejournal.com]

I think I need to look up this Mendol. My only sadness is I'll have no one to inflict ... I mean share it with. The long rebuffed plans (rebuffed by the union) to start a J drama club have been well and truly abandoned now fran has left to look for a job as a teaching assistant in london. That and the fact my friends lives seem to be becoming busier and busier.